


Plus One

by claquesous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Lots of kissing, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post Season 1, Threesome - F/M/M, don't worry everybody is underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claquesous/pseuds/claquesous
Summary: “Jonathan,It’s probably stupid to apologize now, after all that, but I’m sorry. What you did was creepy as hell, but I had no right to get angry for Nancy. And turns out, you’re a terrific monster slayer, so I want you two on my side when that shit comes back.Steve.P.S. We should hang out. We have more in common than I realized. You know, being in love with Nancy.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Things people might want to be warned about  
> • one f-slur mentioned  
> • one teasing "pervert"  
> • Jonathan has an unhealthy relationship with his body and sexuality

Jonathan leaves the camera in its box for a few hours, wary of it for no reason that he can properly articulate. He supposes, later, that it’s Nancy he’s wary of, and not the gift. They’ve barely spoken since the night they found Will and killed the Demogorgon. They aren’t avoiding each other, but nothing of substance has passed between them, just the run-ins and small talk that can be expected when your little brothers are best friends.

When he does take it out of the box, he’s surprised by a note wedged into the packaging. Handwriting that is clearly not Nancy’s takes the surprise a notch higher:  
“Jonathan,

“It’s probably stupid to apologize now, after all that, but I’m sorry. What you did  was creepy as hell, but I had no right to get angry for Nancy. And turns out, you’re a terrific monster slayer, so I want you two on my side when that shit comes back.

“Steve.

“P.S. We should hang out. We have more in common than I realized. You know, being in love with Nancy.”

Jonathan stares at the note, rereading the especially baffling parts of it, like “sorry,” and “terrific,” and “love,” for a good five minutes. Long enough that Will asks him if the camera’s all right.

“Yeah,” he manages, smiling at Will. “It’s fine.”

* * *

Two weeks later, despite weather that  _ almost  _ manages to get them out of school, what with the mysterious disappearance of all the de-icing salt, Steve invites Nancy to another pool party. Just them, he promises. Plus one. Nancy rolls her eyes and says if her mom will let her, sure. Steve pouts, but her mother says yes. Nancy suspects it’s out of gratitude for her bald honesty. No more secrets, after all. She supposes that should include her mother.

Steve gallantly ushers her into the apparently empty house, grinning uncontrollably, the Clash blasting in the next room.

Turns out the plus one is not Steve’s dick.

“Jonathan?”

He turns to look at her, smiling tentatively. He smirks wryly at the perfectly timed, “Should I stay or should I go?” and Nancy flings her arms around his neck.

“I thought Steve was going to beat me up again,” he confesses to her hair.

“Beat  _ you _ up?” Nancy giggles. “You’re the one who got arrested.”

Jonathan shakes with laughter. “I guess you’re right.”

They step apart and Steve winds his arms around Nancy from behind, grinning but with a shockingly apparent undercurrent of anxiety.

“So, you forgive me?” Steve asks.

Jonathan stares at him. “Of course.” He shakes his head thoughtfully. “I mean, if Nancy does, but clearly you two are—” He shrugs. “Do you forgive me?” he asks doubtfully after a second. “Like she said…”

Steve laughs, not nastily. “Like  _ you _ said. If Nancy does.”

Nancy is a lovely shade of pink. It makes Jonathan painfully aware of how much he always wants to kiss her and how he always can’t.

“Ask her,” Steve says, and Jonathan looks at him in confusion. “Ask her,” Steve repeats.

Jonathan looks at Nancy, who is pinker. Clearly this has been discussed without him, but strangely, Jonathan doesn’t care. They wouldn’t bother bringing it up if there wasn’t some kind of…

“Nancy,” Jonathan says, and she gives him that shy, eyelash-screened, unbearably and unintentionally flirtatious look.  _ God. _ “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, please.” The second half of “please” is murmured into Jonathan’s mouth. He wouldn’t have cut it off if he had known it was coming, but he didn’t, so he does, and he can’t bring himself to stop kissing Nancy once he’s made contact. His first order of business is to make her understand how he admires her, adores her, is in awe of her. He feels like a puppy licking the mouths of his superiors in hopes of food, and for some reason she keeps letting him, even though he must be annoying her, she must be indulging him, but then she’s sighing against his mouth and Jonathan realizes she wants this too, remembers she said  _ please _ , and that shock coincides with the shock of her tongue against his lips and he can do nothing but let her do as she will.

“Tongue on the first kiss,” Steve comments, and Jonathan withdraws, picking flight over fight before he remembers that Steve prompted this, must be okay with this.

“Stop it,” Nancy hisses, trying not to smile. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Steve raises his hands and eyebrows in submission. “I’m just  _ observing _ .”

“Well, shut up about it.” Jonathan pushes him lightly over Nancy’s shoulder. “I have to concentrate.”

He feels high on Nancy Wheeler. She’s said  _ yes please _ so nothing Steve says or does can ever touch him again. He touches his mouth to the crease at the corner of hers, the place where her smiles show up first. It's quiet and careful, but she surges forward to pick up where they left off, her tongue curious and inventive in his mouth. Jonathan’s eyelashes kiss her cheek and she shivers in his arms, smiling into the kiss.

“Okay, hang on, it’s my turn,” Steve walks in on Jonathan’s moment again, and he scowls before he can stop himself. Nancy sees this and her face cracks apart in a grin that vanishes even as Jonathan glimpses it, because Steve is kissing… Jonathan?

...Steve is kissing Jonathan.

“What?” Jonathan blurts out, and Steve withdraws as if slapped.

“Oh, shit, I—”

“No, I just—”

“Fuck, I’m—”

“No, it’s fine, um—”

“Time out,” Nancy cuts in, her voice sharp but not harsh. “Jonathan, Steve would like to kiss you too, but he should have  _ asked _ ,” she says with a meaningful look at Steve.

Steve looks mildly put out and more than mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, looking at his shoes.

Jonathan takes a moment to regain his footing. Then he frowns. “Well, are you going to ask?”

Steve looks up at him, face slack in complete and total shock. Caught off guard by a combination of Nancy Wheeler-fueled boldness and unexpected fondness for this new bashful Steve, Jonathan smirks and says, “You’re much cuter when you’re not trying so hard to be a giant douchebag.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up and he opens his mouth in what looks like it’s going to be indignation until he curls a hand around the back of Jonathan’s head and kisses him, short and hard. He pulls back before Jonathan can get a real feel for him, and Jonathan frowns thoughtfully.

Nancy’s delighted laugh startles both of them. “Steve,” she says patiently. “You saw how he kissed me. Let him kiss you like that. Don’t be…”

“A giant douchebag?” Steve suggests with a wry smirk. Nancy gives him a traitorous shrug, but she's grinning. He crosses his arms, trying and failing to be surly about it, and raises his eyebrows defensively at Jonathan.

More insistent this time, that fondness returns, for  _ Steve _ , who of all people Jonathan never expected to so much as tolerate. He expects he’s caught it from Nancy, because lord knows everyone within fifty miles of Hawkins can see that rolling off her in waves, but some of it, he suspects, is his own.

Steve needs more warming up. Jonathan tries several times to kiss him and pulls back almost immediately the first few times, unsatisfied with Steve’s emotional vulnerability. “Come on,” he huffs finally. “This was your idea in the first place.”

Steve uncrosses his arms and steps closer to Jonathan, starting to blush. “Sorry,” he grumbles, eyes falling shut as Jonathan curls a hand into the hair at the back of Steve’s neck. This time he lets Jonathan in, settling hands around his waist in a way that makes Jonathan feel curiously like a girl, even more curious for how much he likes it. Despite the number of times he’s been called a faggot at school, it’s never occurred to Jonathan to imagine in detail what being tangled up with a body more like his would be like. To be fair, he hasn’t spent much time thinking about being tangled up with anyone (except for Nancy, and that recently). It’s all very new, and little things jump out at him as unbearably lovely: the extra dodging he has to do to avoid Steve’s nose, as opposed to Nancy’s delicate little sloping nose; how tiny Nancy’s waist and neck feel in his hands, and how much more he’s aware of Steve’s equal if not greater physical presence.

Even though it feels like it should be the other way around, Steve clings to him like he might fall over as Jonathan allows the kisses to get sloppier, open-mouthed and imprecise, but never hurried. Everything is deliberate and each kiss says something, most of those things being something along the lines of, “You’re much cuter when you’re so in love with Nancy you fall in love with the people she loves.”

They surface eventually and Steve looks happily rebuked. He gives Nancy a dazed grin and Nancy gives him a quick kiss for it:  _ I told you so. _

Now Jonathan is the one blushing furiously. “I’ve, uh, obviously never kissed anyone before..”

“ _ Obviously _ ,” Steve scoffs, grinning at Nancy indulgently, like,  _ Can you believe the shit he says? _ “I’ve kissed a lot of people and you are not the worst.”

Jonathan gives him a dubious smile. “Thanks?”

Nancy glides right into his personal space and makes herself at home there, and he holds her tight as she kisses his neck. “Thank you for the trust.”

“Me?” he laughs, slightly hysterical. “Thank  _ you _ for… everything. For killing the demogorgon with me, for”—he looks pointedly at Steve—“saving my life, both of you, for giving me a camera and a second chance, for liking me even though I’m a total creep—”

Nancy cuts him off with a kiss, and her eyebrows are doing the cute anxiety thing when she pulls back. “You don’t need to thank us like we’re doing this for you. I mean, we are, but—”

“I’m a selfish sonofabitch, Johnny boy,” Steve volunteers bluntly. “Nancy might pity-kiss you, but I definitely wouldn’t.” He intercepts Nancy to press his mouth to Jonathan’s nonchalantly, and Jonathan is proud that he can accept the kiss almost as calmly. “Seriously. And anyway, she’s not.”

“Don't ever call me that again,” Jonathan says, but his face is on fire, as are his insides and, unfortunately, his dick.

Steve must see this thought on his face, because he grins as evilly as he can, wraps his arms around Nancy from behind, and slides his hands up under her shirt to rub her stomach in what he hopes is a sexy way. He doesn’t want to go straight for the boobs or ass, because he doesn’t know how comfortable Jonathan or Nancy would be with that, but he evidently gets his point across, because Jonathan grins weakly.

“Well, if you were hoping to—”

“Have a hot threesome with my favorite person in the world and her favorite person?”

“...Yeah,” Jonathan manages, very close to the laughing-crying threshold of emotion and not sure which he might do when he gets there. “Okay if I just, uh, watch?”

“Pervert,” Steve accuses with delight, and Nancy covers her face in surrogate embarrassment.

Jonathan shrugs with an incriminating grin, and Nancy giggles, reassured.

“Of course you can watch,” she says, smiling even more fondly.

Jonathan is pretty sure he might catch fire and ascend to heaven before he even gets a chance to see Nancy and Steve make out, which he is prepared to be very put out about. Fortunately, they get right down to it, and Jonathan follows them to Steve’s bedroom, feeling very much like a pervert and very much enjoying it.

By the time Steve and Nancy get to the bed, there are no shirts on either of them and they’re kissing each other like there’s nothing else to do in the world. Jonathan has the vague sense that there’s something there that he didn’t bring to the table, some kind of hunger, but the fondness is there too, and Steve’s idolatry of her, and her trust of him. Watching them kiss, Jonathan better understands the two of them, which means he better understands Steve, and better likes him.

“Jonathan?” Nancy sighs hoarsely, and Jonathan’s insides twinge pleasantly at the texture of her voice.

“Mmhmm?” he says softly, and she looks over at him, flushed and alight with happiness.

“Whatever you want,” she says, and chokes on a moan as Steve does something clever between her legs. “Whatever you want, please tell us.”

Jonathan smiles at her, something like fondness but slightly different rising like floodwaters well past the boundaries this emotion has ever seen. Is it love? Now seems like a stupid time to ask that question. “I want to kiss you,” he says softly, and kneels beside the bed so he can steal a kiss from Nancy's slick, bitten lips. She latches onto him, sets upon him with a torrent of kisses. She’s breathing faster than she was last time he kissed her and making these delightful little noises that feel to Jonathan like a blindingly genuine smile: not something he absolutely needs to hear every single day of his life, but that will never fail, he suspects, to reassure him that she’s happy and well cared for.

“That’s right,” Steve says huskily, his hand still working between her thighs. “Take care of her, make her feel good, make her feel important…”

And Jonathan sees several things (she gasps; her body tightens up, arches back; her eyes squeeze shut like she’s in pain; time stops for a few seconds; Steve sighs a little like a growl; she relaxes, smiles, squirms a little, hums) that seem to indicate an orgasm.

“Jesus Christ,” Jonathan says weakly.

Steve buries his free hand in Jonathan’s hair for a few seconds. “Right? And with any luck, she’ll be doing that again.”

Nancy giggles, almost painfully happy in the way that the sun is painfully bright. Following this metaphor, Jonathan will happily blind himself staring right at her for the rest of his life.

Jonathan kisses the side of her face and she smiles even wider, her eyes squeezing shut again. Jonathan takes this as an invitation and drags his lips gently across hers, twisting a hand in her hair.

“You're so beautiful,” Steve sighs. “Both of you.”

Jonathan smiles wryly and rolls onto the bed beside Nancy, running a hand down her neck, along her collarbone and over her shoulder. Her breasts are right there and seem like the obvious thing to touch, but Steve seems to have them covered, so he just does what feels right. 

And what feels right is running two knuckles gently down Nancy's side to her jutting hipbone and thumbing circles around the peak of her hip, face pressed to her neck like he'll suffocate if he moves. Her smell is so quintessentially  _ her _ that Jonathan's content to sacrifice the sight of her for a few seconds, mouthing at her neck because he just needs to  _ touch _ her. 

“I love you… Jonathan. You know that, right?”

Jonathan is startled out of his sensory pioneering and pulls back to look at her. “I guess I figured you liked me… but you mean  _ love _ me, don't you?” His voice can't find room for anything but wonder. 

Nancy takes Jonathan's face in her hands and kisses him the way he must have kissed her: with all the time in the world, leaving nothing unsaid and no room for misinterpretation. She kisses him and he understands: he is safety to her; he is the person she can tell about the parts of her even she doesn't like; he’s the spotter and the safety net and a mirror, but kinder. 

He pulls back, overwhelmed, with unfortunate timing; the sounds of the room all halt exactly as his throat collapses and a hoarse sort of gasp comes out. 

“Jonathan?” they both ask immediately. Embarrassed, he curls in on himself, avoiding their eyes.

“I'm fine, I just wasn't expecting that,” he says softly, eyes on Nancy, and she knows exactly what he means and she is furious. 

“You—weren't expecting what?” She scrambles to sit up and Steve backs up real quick, which makes Jonathan nervous. “To find out that I do mean it? You know, I am capable of real, big girl feelings,” she says, flippant but desperately sincere. “Dammit, I love you, Jonathan!” She is obviously upset and Jonathan doesn't understand why. Steve, displaced, puts his head on Nancy's thigh and smirks at him. 

“Of course I wasn't saying that,” Jonathan says, very close to angry. “Are you kidding?” He looks at Steve incredulously. “Most people think what you did, that I'm an anti-social creep who avoids people because he hates them, not because they hate  _ me _ .” He shrugs wildly, trying not to seem too pitiful. “It's fine. I'm used to it. This,” he nods with a slightly unhinged chuckle at their little arrangement, “is going to take some getting used to.”

Steve's smirk is gone. He army-crawls to Jonathan and puts his head in his lap, looking obliquely up at him with a canny expression. “I don't think you're a creep. I... I think I understand now that you weren't getting off on invading her privacy or even on her… I think. You were just… recognizing art. You meant that.” His expression is so without facade that Jonathan is suspicious, but Nancy's Steve would be serious right now, and in this moment, Steve is the most _ Nancy's _ he ever gets.

Jonathan runs his hand through Steve's disheveled hair after a long moment, and Steve smiles tentatively. “I'm right, aren't I? This isn't sexual to you—I mean, this is,” he gestures at his own boner, But this isn't,” he smoothes a hand gently over one of Nancy's breasts, and she smiles fondly down at him. 

Jonathan nods haltingly. “Sure.”

Nancy's eyebrows push together adorably. “Is kissing sexual?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Sort of, but that's not why I like it.”

“Weird,” marvels Steve, but his tone sounds like he meant to say something more along the lines of “strange and wonderful.”

Jonathan leans over him to drag his lips over Steve's forehead. He can see the contours of his face shift into a smile in his peripheral vision and a moment later there are hands winding through his hair, pulling lightly, which makes him do something like moan, like he left his vocal chords unattended and they decided to throw a party in his absence. 

“Oh, do that again,” says Nancy, delighted and breathless. 

Jonathan laughs softly until Steve does indeed do it again, harder, and it's a whine this time.

“Kissing’s  _ sort of  _ sexual?” Steve echoes.

Jonathan smiles sheepishly. “My dick thinks everything is about my dick.” He shrugs and reaches for Steve's mouth, murmuring between more kisses, “But that's not the _ only _ reason I like it.” Steve chuckles sympathetically. 

Steve is breaking in nicely, Jonathan thinks as their tongues brush lightly. He's not so defensive when he's caught up in the moment. 

Nancy gives a wondering snort. “You two beat the  _ shit _ out of each other a month ago!” She shakes her head and laughs. 

“Thanks for putting up with both sides of that,” Jonathan said, and Steve squirms over into a sitting position so he can keep kissing his neck. 

Nancy shrugs, looking like a fucking painting with her shoulders curled around the slope of her bare breasts and her legs tucked under her and her skirt rucked up. “I knew you were both better than that, and to an extent being idiots because of me. I felt bad.”

Jonathan squirms, a reaction both to Nancy's guilt and something Steve has done to his neck with his teeth. “That wasn't your fault,” he says. “It was mine.”

“No,” Steve says, finally cutting in, “it was mine.” He glowers at his hands in his lap. “I provoked you.”

Jonathan shrugs. “Well, now you're giving me hickeys, so it was worth it.”

Steve grins, looking slightly wild with his hair well kissed and his lips red as blood. “Your turn, then.”

Jonathan grins back. “Alright.”

Steve catches and echoes Nancy’s dumbstruck look. His hands curl into Jonathan’s hair automatically as Jonathan bends over his neck and starts teething at his collarbone. Steve has a different taste than Nancy, and his body has a different taste than his mouth. Steve’s mouth is mint and Coke and drive-in movies; his skin is pine and cozy sweaters and a deliciously subtle tang of salt. Jonathan scrapes his teeth over Steve’s shoulder and is rewarded with a yank on his hair, which makes him grin too wide to continue with his hickey.

“My turn,” Nancy says, sounding almost petulant. A smaller hand than the one tangled in his hair tugs at his jacket and he turns to kiss Nancy. It’s a series of short, sweet kisses since they all realize together that A) Jonathan still has a shirt on, and B) Jonathan is totally getting at least a little naked. Steve pulls insistently at his jacket and Nancy leaves him to it, kissing Jonathan so thoroughly that he has no attention to spare for helping Steve.

He starts when Nancy’s hand slides up his shirt. The feeling of her fingertips dragging through the hair just above his waistband makes him tense up and groan.

“You okay?” she asks quietly against his mouth.

“I… just wanna watch,” he manages. Even with Nancy here, who is definitely the least emotionally taxing non-relative he knows, and less emotionally taxing than plenty of his relatives, too, he can feel his anxiety looking around and rubbing its hands together evilly. Jonathan doesn’t want to tempt it further.

Nancy pulls back, sighing. It’s just disappointed enough to flatter him but not enough to make him guilty. It’s so perfectly calibrated, intentionally or not, to make him comfortable that Jonathan pulls her back for another kiss. “Thank you,” he says, and releases her.

She gives him a dazzling, effortless smile and reaches out for Steve, who curls their fingers together and moves over her.

They’re so comfortable with each other that it puts Jonathan at ease. They kiss and push up against each other and go back and forth with little prods, little taunts of their bodies: Steve tucking a thigh between hers, Nancy dragging her nails down his back, him pulling her hair, her biting his lip. It’s enchanting to watch, so much so that Jonathan forgets to want to jerk off.

Which… he then remembers. His dick gives a throb at the thought of it. He shifts, leans into the partly welcome pressure of his jeans. His breath rushes out through his nose at this, and they pull apart to look at him. Jonathan blushes furiously, ducks his head, but Nancy smiles.

“Do you… want to touch yourself?”

“ _ Please _ jerk off,” Steve amends, giving his own dick a few strokes.

That’s too polite an invitation to decline. Jonathan wrestles his jeans open and pushes his fingers under his waistband, and Steve coughs.

“Don’t  _ hide _ it,” he whines, and leans over, which makes Jonathan freeze, but only to give him a cursory but affectionate kiss. Jonathan catches a glimpse, as his eyes flutter back open, of Nancy’s especially glowing smile, split between them.

“You’re so good to him,” she murmurs to Steve as he kisses her again. “Thank you.”

Jonathan seizes the opportunity to get his dick out without an audience, and he’s leaking so copiously that he doesn’t even need saliva. He winces at the obscene thought. This is how he usually feels about masturbating (and about his own body in general, for that matter), and yet here he sits, watching a similar but beautiful thing unfold between Nancy and Steve. He’s sort of even participating. Does that mean his base, animal body and its base, animal needs aren’t gross?

But then Steve evidently pushes into Nancy, because they each let out a desperate moan, the two notes in dissonant but beautiful harmony with each other.

Jonathan is suddenly very finished with his internal struggle. He’s too exhilarated, distracted, and overwhelmed to pay attention to anything but the sounds they’re making and his hand on his dick, and he comes into his hand in less than a minute. God, he hopes they weren’t paying attention, he thinks dizzily, but when his vision clears they’re both smiling at him.

“God, I’m—sorry,” he says. Were he a normally tightly wound human being, he would laugh. He isn’t.

Nancy pulls him to her for a kiss. It’s lazy, without pretense. It’s simply a kiss, an “I love you” kiss, an “It’s okay” kiss. When she pulls away Jonathan can breathe again.

Steve slaps a wad of tissues into his hand with a startlingly tender smile. Jonathan laughs now, a kind of choked spasm, but it  _ is  _ technically a laugh. He cleans himself off and zips his pants back up and immediately feels considerably better. He even feels up to scooting closer to Nancy, kissing her shoulder as she shakes and whines beneath Steve.

“Hey, Nance,” Steve whispers, drawing out his rocking thrusts. “How ‘bout we show Jonathan how else you like it. Wouldn’t want him to think I’m having all the fun.”

Nancy lights up like the sun, already devastatingly beautiful and now blinding. Steve sits back and pulls her up, and she pushes him back onto the bed, his dick still buried inside her. He moans helplessly and puts his hands on her waist like she might float through the ceiling. Jonathan’s feeling like he might do that himself.

Nancy draws herself up and rocks against Steve, her breaths going even deeper and louder. She throws her head back and Jonathan absolutely cannot do anything but get up on his knees to kiss her. She’s messier and faster and louder, and continues to escalate the situation until she settles heavily onto Steve’s hips and whines, high and long. Steve’s knees come up behind her and he gives an almost pained-sounding groan. He curls in on his own pleasure, his hips shaking uncontrollably.

Jonathan’s dick gives a sympathy jerk, and he smiles. He’s not sure which of the possible reasons is primarily responsible for making him feel so euphoric: the best orgasm he’s ever had, the first orgasms he’s watched other people have, the considerable emotional exchange, the intimacy expressed. It could be for those reasons and more.

For now, he’s more than happy to curl up, jeans and all, next to Nancy and Steve, palely flushed and slightly sweaty while three sets of breaths coast to the slow, deep rhythm of utterly peaceful wakefulness. Nancy slides off of Steve, who flings his used condom at the trash, and the boys make warm, breathing parentheses around Nancy’s beautiful, tired body. Even though it can’t be later than eight, they’re all skimming the surface of unconsciousness within five minutes.

It’s the best nap Jonathan’s had in his entire life.

The rest of the night isn’t too bad, either.


End file.
